SingStar director sniped by Atari

As executive producer for Sony's SingStar series for the past six years, Paulina Bozek helped turn the casual karaoke game into an international success. Atari is hoping Bozek will turn out to be more than a one-hit wonder, because it has hired her to be development director of the publisher's new London-based studio.

Bozek's new surroundings may be surprisingly familiar. For one thing, she will ultimately be answering to Phil Harrison, himself a recent defector from the Sony camp. Weeks after he stepped down from his position as president of Sony Worldwide Studios, Harrison was introduced as the man who would turn Atari parent Infogrames' fate around as its new president.

In his new position, one of Harrison's first public moves was to turn the publisher away from big-budget, single-player games, like the recently released Alone in the Dark, and toward more online and social games. In keeping with that mandate, Bozek's new studio will focus on creating mass-market games for PCs and online consoles.

No new project or official name for the studio was announced, but the developer will soon be recruiting full-time employees and external contractors.